The Movie:Speed is efficient, fat-free American action filmmaking at its best. It is so lean, that those with an analytical bent can barely get a hook into it. You prod and poke and try to gain a foothold, but it is so lithe, that it almost defies criticism, first because it is so popular no one cares to know any more about it or be swayed to admire it, and second because it is so streamlined and knows itself so well that it doesn't seem to need any help.

You do know the story of Speed don't you? If not, here it is. One morning after a meeting a group of vaguely yuppie business people get on an elevator in Los Angeles, and the next thing they know the car is stalled between floors. What they don't know is that a madman named Howard Payne (Payne, get it?), played by Dennis Hopper, and whom we met at the start of the film, has rigged the elevator with a bomb. He is holding it ransom for some three million dollars. On to the scene comes SWAT team members Jack Traven (Keanu Reeves) and his senior partner Harry Temple (Jeff Daniels). They manage to outwit and thwart Payne, and both think he's dead.

But he's not. He's got an even better scheme this time (it's not clear when "this time" actually is, whether a few weeks, or a year later). He's rigged a bus to activate a hidden bomb when it travels over 50 miles an hour. If it then falls under 50 miles an hour, the bomb is detonated. Payne wants Traven to know about this set-up, so as to best him in their second round. The whole middle section of the film concerns the events on and around the bus. There Jack meets Annie (Sandra Bullock, in a career making role), who ends up having to sub for the original driver.

One of the frequently mentioned cool things about Speed is that once this segment ends, the movie has a whole other segment up its sleeve. This involves yet another mode of transportation, a subway, but one mustn't say any more about this on the off chance that the viewer really hasn't seen Speed or knows much of anything about it.

Suffice it to say that if you are in the mood for it, Speed is a wild ride. It seems to have minimal plot, but in fact it has a lot of story in it—it's just that the plot is so tightly hewn to the action that the film just feels like a rush.

Speed is directed by Jan De Bont, veteran DP of numerous '80s action films, from a script credited to Graham Yost, who had done a couple of actioners himself. It's made by people who really like movie movies; this isn't Ingmar Bergman. But that doesn't mean that it lacks some thematic interest.

It's curious that a lot of what Jack Traven's character does is wrong. Though a lot of his suggestions work (driving over the gap in the bridge), most of them get everybody else in trouble (finding Payne hiding in an elevator). The film is making an interesting contrast between callow youth and seasoned professionalism, represented by Daniels, and their boss Joe Morton. The thrust of the film is that Jack Traven must inherit the mantle of professionalism from Harry Temple at the moment that he makes a terrible mistake. From that point on, Jack can be fooled, but he is never wrong.